


They Took Out The Blood And Death

by alyseofwonderland (Esyla), Esyla



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Bucky Barnes is a big fan of going commando, But different because this is 10+1 things, Claire Temple is a hero in every universe, Clint and Steve have joint custody of Wanda, Comics Clint, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Deaf Clint Barton, Disney Princesses as spirit animals, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Grief, Hans Christian Andersen - Freeform, Implied Wanda/Vision - Freeform, Little Red Riding Hood - Freeform, M/M, Nat/Clint if you squint and turn your head to a 45 degree angle, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Persephone - Freeform, Pinocchio - Freeform, Playlist, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Snow White - Freeform, Some Crack, Some Fluff, Steve Rogers the original shit starter, Tam Lin - Freeform, The 10th Kingdom - Freeform, The Snow Queen - Freeform, The little mermaid - Freeform, The ten times Sam picked fairy tales for the avengers and the one time they picked on for him, fairy godmother - Freeform, final chapter is all fun and games, implied suicidal thoughts, narrative as therapy, rapunzel - Freeform, shout out to Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard for sneaking into this story without me trying, the Brothers Grimm, the defenders are mentioned in passing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/alyseofwonderland, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/Esyla
Summary: “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” ~ G. K. Chesterton, writer. Sam Wilson is a slut for Fairy Tales. Steve considers what it takes to cut out a heart. A man in the woods needs a name. Cinderella and the King's son adopt little Red Riding Hood. A mermaid becomes sea foam. A fairy godmother gets his wings.The dark fairy tale remix no one asked for.-Different members of the Avengers find healing or understanding in the pages of classic Fairy Tales.-Songs and quotes included.





	1. Once Upon A Time...

**Author's Note:**

> We are going full old school here people. Pre-Grimm or Grimm level of blood and gore. Hans Christian Andersen versions of suffering and death. If you don’t know those versions I honestly encourage you to check them out.
> 
> If Sam seems like he is OOC it’s because I have turned that boy into my personal mouth piece for this story. I have so many thoughts and feels about fairy tales and mythology you don’t even understand.
> 
> Steve and Bucky are tagged as the relationship because they are the only ones that will be getting any screen time has being in a romantic relationship. Everything else is sort of hinted at with a magic wave of my hand. 
> 
> Thanks to Nina for listening to me while I circled different story ideas. And for also being as big of a slut for Fairy Tales as I am. And sending me like 18 PDFs of stories. And for being suitably emotionally damaged by what I wrote to make me want to post this. 
> 
> These depressive assholes are gonna be a problem.

Tell me everything that happened

Tell me everything you saw

They had lights inside their eyes

 

Did you touch them?

Did you hold them?

Did they follow you to town?

They make me feel I’m falling down

 

They were kids that I once knew

Now they’re all dead hearts to you.

Dead Hearts, Starts

 ---

Sam is a slut for fairy tales. Sam is always down for Disney and has watched every episode of Once Upon a Time no matter how ridiculous it has gotten. He owns three complete sets of fairy tales and the illustrated versions of the Hans Christian Andersen books. When 10th Kingdom came out he bought the DVD’s and got into an actual argument with someone in the army about the validity of owning this many princess themed items.

(“Walk away man, or I will lay down so much knowledge you are gonna need all the kings horse and all the kings men to put you together again.”

“Really? Really, Sam? A Humptydumpty reference?”)

His Ma was the one that got him into the weird fantastical stories as a child, reading to him late at night. She liked the old German and Scottish stories. Back then it wasn’t as strange to read stories with death and gore to a child.

“Disney is fine but they took out the blood and death.” She told him. “Life is full of blood and death but that doesn’t mean it can’t be wonderful and good. Fairy Tales teach you that.”

His Ma had been right about that.

**_“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.” -Albert Einstein_ **

-

If Sam could get away with it he would wrap each of the Avengers in their own blanket burrito and spoon feed them their favorite ice cream until their traumas went away. Hell he would build a blanket fort if that’s what it took.

Turns out that becoming the type of person willing to save the world requires a certain amount of blood letting. He doesn’t actually try the blanket burrito, if only because Natasha would crush him if he tried it. Bruce might allow it. Steve would never in a million years go along with the blanket burrito idea unless he was tricked into and Sam was not a spy.

None of them were willing to go to proper Therapy and Sam wasn’t exactly qualified to help the bag of cats each Avenger had in their head. A whole fleet of therapist might actually be required for each member.

(What would a large group of therapists even be called? A council?)

Sam was poking around his book shelf when he finds Spinning Straw Into Gold by Joan Gould. He had read it for his Women’s Studies class ages ago. It was a good book and had some interesting points. He had done his final paper on the important of fairy tales in the female narrative. He had learned a lot from that book.

Like the healing power of stories as a point of reference.

Every life needs a narrative, even Superheroes.

**_“Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”- Hans Christian Andersen_ **


	2. The Snow Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark and his army of snowflakes, living in a frozen castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Playlist for this story now on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)
> 
>  
> 
> Nina says this chapter hurts a lot.

Get a little closer, let fold

Cut open my sternum, and pull

My little ribs around you

Fireshine, Purity Ring

 

“Did you ever read the original Snow Queen fairy tale?” Sam Wilson asks while the country is deep in the middle of Frozen hysteria. Tony now knows every line of that damnable “Let It Go” song. It’s a catchy song. He has sung it several times. No one needs to know that.

“Yeah.” Tony offers, hoping his answer conveys that he does not have ‘Do you want to build a snowman?’ stuck in his head. He does.

“I like the Robber girl way better than this talking snowman.” Sam smiles and flicks a cartoon snowman that had ended up in the tower somehow. Tony is almost certain that Natasha is to blame for the stuffed snowman and his continual movements around the tower, but nothing can be proved.

-

When Tony was little his mother read him The Snow Queen. Maria had loved the story, something her grandmother had read to her when she had been sick. An heirloom story, passed from mother to child.

As a child Tony had in part hated the story and loved it. It seemed so silly that the little boy Kai couldn’t save himself and had to wait for his friend Greda to kiss him and cry on him. Even Tony had known not to talk to strangers or get in a vehicle with a strange woman. He thought the River giving Greda her shoes back was very funny. River’s didn’t have personalities.

Later the story came to mind as he sat alone in the Avengers compound. His own ice castle.

**_“You’re a fine one for tramping around,” the bandit girl said to Kai. “I’d like to know – do you really deserve to have someone run to the end of the world just for your sake?”- Hans Christian Andersen_ **

_-_

There was no mirror made by the Devil, reflecting only what was terrible in the world. That was the stuff of stories. Still, Tony Stark had a shard of metal and glass in his heart. Literally. It didn’t have to be evil it just had to get close enough to his heart to kill him. No magic involved, no devil, no god, just physics and Tony’s beating heart.

There were no shards in his eyes and yet all he saw in the world, in life, were the things that seemed terrible and wrong. Poor Orphan Tony Stark. It didn’t matter that he was legally an adult. It didn’t matter that he had enough money to never need to work a day in his life. In the middle of December he was left alone in a cold house forever. No amount of family friends or work relations could ever make that better. It didn’t matter what kind of person he had been before, no one was prepared to lose their parents.

It changed him. Took something from him he didn’t know he had in the first place. Left nothing but ugliness in it’s place. He saw people for what they were, their desires to use him or be used by him. He could pretend to be his old self. No one noticed the change.

His mind, his heart was frozen. Sustained by the power of the Arch reactor.

-

Two reactors. Two kisses from a Snow Queen. A third would kill him.

The Snow Queen had kissed Kai twice. The first to numb him to the cold. The second to keep in in her power. His reactors were so similar to those kisses it was laughable. The great Tony Stark, Iron Man, sustained by a small bit of light in the center of his chest. It was killing him. Just like stupid Kai, freezing to death in the Snow Queen’s castle.

Until Pepper kissed him and melted his heart. Until the doctors took the glass from his heart.

Tony had thought he was going to get the happy ending. Greda to love him and a village to return to. They had gotten through all those trails. Pepper had *survived*. He was going to be okay. He had gotten to the end of the book.

-

And then Pepper had left. Tony still had the glass in his eyes. His heart wasn’t going to kill him but it felt like it would try. The world was still such an ugly place. Maybe he could fix it.

Tony set himself an impossible task, there was no Queen on a throne making him. Fix the world. Put the puzzle pieces together.

He tried to put armor on the world and it nearly killed him.

He should have known he would freeze everyone out. He had heard the story so often it seems laughable that he should find himself in a freezing castle of his own making, with robots as his personal snowflakes.

The story never mentions what happens to the Snow Queen. Kai and Greda dance and kiss and return to their home but the Queen is simply gone. Maybe his story ends here. Tony thinks he might deserve this. He was silly to think he could be a hero in a story.

**_“When we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now...”-Hans Christian Andersen_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark is not my favorite, but he was the one that started this idea. Well him and Bucky, but you don't get to know who Bucky gets for a story just yet. 
> 
> I am hoping to post a chapter a day. (Chapter 1 is a prologue so it didn't count) I have the next few chapters mostly written/finished. 
> 
>  
> 
> [ Find me on tumblr for updates and brainstorming. ](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	3. Snow White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The three deaths of Snow White and Steven Grant Rogers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so proud of this chapter you have no idea. When Nina first saw it she screamed at me and then made herself a Pork Cutlet Bowel to try and take away the pain. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Don't forget about the Playlist. I spent WAY too many hours looking for these songs for you not to listen and cry along. ](https://open.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)

So kiss me on the mouth and set me free

But please, don’t bite

You can coax the cold right out of me

Bite, Troye Sivan

-

 

Steve had loved Snow White. When he had the change he would go watch the film over and over. Bucky used to tease him for it. “You’re more in love with that animation than any man has a right to be. How’s a girl ever gonna catch your eye if you love Snow White that much?”

The animation had been cutting edge back then. A masterpiece. Before the war, Steve had wanted to be an animator. Bucky had never laughed at that idea. “You got the mind of it.” Steve had dreamed of spending hours every day painstakingly, lovingly, rendering Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

Now it’s one of the few things from his past, his life that still exists. An anchor left from a ship that’s no longer there. 

“Why do you always have to be the fairest of them all?” Tony says it as a joke. It doesn’t feel like a joke to Steve. 

Doctor Erskine had a vision and Steve was the actualization of that vision. Snow White’s mother had pricked her finger and seen a vision of child so perfect in every way. That vision had killed her. It killed Doctor Erskine too. A good man dead for his ideas, and Steve all that was left to show for his greatness. 

He could feel the envy others felt towards him most days. Others looked at him and felt desire. Either way there were eyes on Steve, always. If felt suffocating, worse than his asthma had ever felt. In the old stories of Snow White the Queen tried to kill her first with a corset enchanted to crush her ribs, Steve thought about the tightness of his lungs and the weight of his uniform. Every time he suited up the pressure against his ribs felt a little bit worse. One day being Captain America was going to steal the breath from his lungs. 

**_“The unsuspecting Snow-White stood before her and let her do up the new lace, but the old woman pulled so quickly and so hard that Snow-White could not breathe.” –Jacob Grimm_ **

_-_

There had been no apple in Steve’s mouth when he crashed the Valkyrie into the ice. Still he had entered a death like sleep in a coffin of glass. Just like Snow White, Steve had taken a bite willingly. He had been so hungry for it. Bucky gone down a mountain pass. Steve had always wondered why Snow White opened the door a third time. Why let the woman in when it was so clear she was there to kill you? 

He gets that impulse now. Why fight this? Take a bite of the apple. Take the plane into the frozen water. Let it be over. This fight, this struggle he had gotten himself into, it was consuming him. So he opened the door to the beggar woman a third time.

**_“Why did I let her in? Didn’t I know she was bad? I did. Of course I did. But I also knew that I couldn’t keep the door closed all of my life just because it was dangerous. Just because there was a chance that I might get hurt.” - Snow White, The 10th Kingdom._ **

No prince had come to wake him. No magic true love wandering in the wilderness found him. Like in the original story, Steve coughed up the poison in his throat. He got thawed out be scientists. 

Snow White woke up to find a Prince, instead Steve woke to find a world changed. They didn’t leave him alone for long. The uniform was back. That crushing weight returned. 

The world was different. Yet nothing had changed. 

**_“Snow-White lay there in the coffin a long, long time, and she did not decay, but looked like she was asleep, for she was still as white as snow and as red as blood, and as black-haired as ebony wood.” –Jacob Grimm_ **

_-_

SHEILD was Hydra. The great revelation that Steve’s home had been corrupted from the inside. Poisoned from the inside out. Rotten to its core. Rotten at its head. What had Snow White felt when she was taken from her home?

No one talked about the fact that the Queen was called Step Mother these days. When Steve had been small the book his mother read him never included the word Step. 

“Ma, why would the Queen want to kill her own daughter?”

“Time is the enemy of us all baby.” 

She had been right of course, mothers are like that. The thing that gave birth to Steve in his new beautiful form turned against him. Time. That’s all Hydra had needed. 

“You can blame the Brothers Grim for that change.” Sam had explained when Steve mentioned the memory. “The oral tradition of Snow White had the Queen as her mother.”

“Why’d they change it?” It seems an odd thing to change.

“They didn’t think a mother would ever feel that way towards her own child.” Sam shrugs. “I think they missed the point that the story is a metaphor, a parable. Every mother wants to eat her daughter’s heart, just not in the literal sense.” Sam points to a tabloid in the checkout line. “You see these women desperately clinging to youth and sexuality who fear the younger generation coming to usurp them in their own marriage beds. It’s an important lesson.”

-

They sent a Hunter to carve his heart out. On the bridge, fighting the man with the metal arm, it felt like being hunted. 

Steve had read once that before human had invent tools they had hunted by out running their prey. Human, the only mammal that could sweat, would run their prey down until the poor animal’s heart stopped. An inevitable kind of ending.

This hunter didn’t need to run Steve down. He had every tool imaginable at his disposal. Steve didn’t know if he could win this fight. 

**_“The huntsman obeyed and took Snow-White into the woods. He took out his hunting knife and was about to stab it into her innocent heart when she began to cry,” –Jacob Grimm_ **

It turned out Hydra was not against trying to kill him with two ways at once. A Hunter to carve his heart from his chest and Bucky in that form to stop Steve’s heart. A poison that stopped his heart. 

They should have just asked. Handed Steve the knife, right out of Bucky’s hand. He would have done it himself. That would have hurt less. 

Whooping cough had hurt less. 

What was three gunshot wounds in comparison to having his heart ripped from his chest?

If he was going to die, at least he would die with Bucky at his side in whatever form he took. 

Laying in the hospital, having been pulled from the river Steve remembered that the Hunter always spared Snow White because he loved her. In many versions of the tale the Hunter and The Prince were the same person for Snow White.

When Steve had still been himself, when the world felt huge and he was a single rock batter by waves, there had been Bucky. If Steve had been an illustrator or an animator, if he had been asked to draw Prince Charming the Prince would end up with Bucky’s face. Dark hair brushed to one side with light laughing eyes. 

Bucky was everything a prince should be, charming, loyal, and kind. The fact that he was handsome almost seemed an afterthought when compared with the rest of him. It had felt dazzling to be his best friend. Now the light was tainted, turned to bright against the eyes, a stinging sensation to look at the Hunter.

But the Hunter never really takes the knife to Snow White. He always brings back the heart, or if you are a purist the liver and lungs, of another animal to his mistress. The question becomes, did Bucky return to his dark castle or his kingdom?

A moment before he feel from the helicarrier Steve had watch an emotion cross Bucky’s face. It wasn’t a lot to go on, barely anything really. At this point Steve was used to wandering the woods in the dark. What was one more journey into the dark?

**_“You’re cold. You’re cold Virginia. How did you become so cold? You are still lost in the forest. But lonely, lost girls like us can rescue themselves. You are standing on the edge of greatness.” -Snow White, The 10th Kingdom_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a personal grudge against the Brothers Grimm for adding the word Step before Mother in their stories. Some people get nice mothers and then there are those of us whose mother’s would eat their hearts. I didn’t fully realize that my mother had Narcissistic Personality disorder until I read Spinning Straw into Gold by Joan Gould and found myself feeling like Snow White in so many ways. I have had therapists tell me that if I don’t set boundaries with my mother she will consume my life because she has no concept that I can exist outside her sense of self, I am an extension of her and belong to her. If this sounds familiar or if you think your mother is gas lighting you I highly suggest [ this website for more help. ](http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> [Please come talk to me on tumblr!](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	4. Pinocchio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do robot men dream of electric fairies?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one feels a little too on the nose for me.
> 
> Get it.
> 
> do you get it?!
> 
> I think I'm funny and that's what matters.
> 
>  
> 
> [ Playlist for this fic.](https://play.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)

What can we say now?

Our mouths only lying

Lost it to Trying, Son Lux

 

Sam heard later that Ultron had a thing for singing a song from Pinocchio. It sounded so strange. What kind of crazy robot decides to sing a Disney song as a threat? Or had it been more of a mental tick, an indication that something was very wrong with his programing.

Not to mention that Ultron had no desire to be a real boy.

Vision, he wanted to be a real boy. Created from a dream that Tony and Bruce had of AI, made whole with a wish. It was funny but even the power of Thor and a mind stone hadn’t managed to make him a real person. The love of Wanda Maximoff did.

When you wish upon a star, or a magically enhanced woman.

-

**_“A conscience is that still small voice that people won’t listen to.” -Carlo Collodi_ **

He had memories from when he was JARVIS. Empirically it was odd to realize his neural net had mapped those data bites into artificial synapses. It affected how he thought of everyone now that he was a, person. Sir, was Tony now or Mr. Stark but Vision felt a very distinct sense of loyalty and servitude towards him. 

The others had been his charges when he had been JARVIS. People he was created to take care of. He remembered Ms. Romanov’s preferred temperature setting. He could still recite all of Ms. Potts’ favorite books and television shows, as well as every gift Mr. Stark had ever given her. There were black and white images of Captain Rogers that played like memories in his head but were in fact old films he had incorporated into his program when the captain joined the team.

It made it hard to see them as friends. Some days Vision wasn’t entirely sure he knew what a friend was, or how he could feel if he had one. Interacting with most of the team felt wooden and nothing more than a slow impression of what it was to be human. 

His previous coding holding him into his old role like strings on his limbs. 

The exception of course to this confusion was Wanda. She had never been here when he had been JARVIS. All of this thoughts on her where his own, without the programming. Around Wanda Vision could almost convince himself he was real. When he spoke she had no memory of him as a disembodied voice there to help, she saw him only as Vision. 

**_“Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.” ―_ ** **_Orson Scott Card_ ** **_,_ ** **_Speaker for the Dead_ **

When Vision had still been JARVIS he had read all of the fairy tales. In fact, he had had access to almost all of the stories that were a part of a human mythos. They had been part of his learning process. Trying to understand what drove these people. Trying to understand what drove Sir. He had read stories of crazed men who built monsters for their own ego and pride. Those stories felt so familiar. Like echoes in an empty hall or ripples on a pond. 

There was another story, of course, that felt familiar. A tale of a lonely man who wished for a child. A puppet come to life with a will of its own. In that story the puppet child went on a terrible adventure to learn what was right and what was wrong. Vision has a morality subroutine. 

He had been constructed for a purpose. That purpose had been completed. Vision had looked up how humans normally dealt with a lack of purpose. There didn’t seem to be an answer to that question, only more questions. 

The wooden child in the story had suffered the same questions that Vision now faced. He wasn’t exactly an Avenger, he left that to those who seemed to really care about the concept. He wasn’t exactly a person, a body built from a cell like structure. He didn’t have millions of years of evolution clouding his thoughts. He didn’t have hormones that released to condition him into certain behaviors. He as a man, but not. He was a person but not. He was an Avenger, but not. 

Where did that leave him?

With Rhodney’s blood on his metal hands?

Sir, had built him, not just his body but also his mind. Vision was a wish, a hope, and a dream come to life. 

That left a responsibility on the soul. If he had a soul.

**_“Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and one day you will be a real boy.” -The Blue Fairy_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't hate Tony and Vision. I really dont but I am Team Cap from dawn until the sun swallows earth in a few billion years. Those boys have to stay in terrible friend jail until they think about what they have done. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Come see me on tumblr.](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	5. Little Red Riding Hood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you make a little girl into a wolf? Time and fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter actually took forever to achieve because Nina and I spent an entire day looking up every fairy tale and mythos we could find trying to find another 'fit' for Wanda. I just kept thinking, we are being lazy if I put her with Little Red Ridding Hood. I also hated nearly everything else we found. So Wanda got her red hood.
> 
> [Fic Playlist](https://play.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)

Who’s ready to play?

Are we the hunters?

Or are we the prey?

There’s no surrender

And there’s no escape

Game of Survival, Ruelle

-

_**“So the wolf approached the little girl slowly, in a friendly manner, so she wouldn't suspect his true intentions” -Jacob Grimm** _

Wanda did not need Sam to tell her who her story princess was. She had known it from the moment she stood in the center of her church watching her city crumble. She had grown up in the heart of these stories. Sakovia with its dark mountains and bombed out buildings sat between many of the origins of tales.

At the beginning Wanda had thought perhaps that she might be Gretel, with her brother out to kill the witch who would eat the world. Tony Stark turned out not to be a witch, he was something else that might be worse but not her true enemy in the end.

She had walked into those woods willingly. Taken the scepter in her own hands and let the magic pour into her. Had felt herself be remade into something she didn’t recognize. She had strayed from the path on her own. Gone to that church and taken the promises of a man made of metal.

Wanda wore read to remember. She was not so vain to wear red because it was the color her magic took. She wore it as a reminder of the teeth at her throat.

Taken in by a person dressed in the outfit of a friend. A wolf in robot clothing. Come to give her and her brother their revenge and their strength. Ultron with his big teeth, wanting to take a bite out of the world.

Poor little Red who went on a journey into the forest to find herself and found her death instead. Poor little Red who could not see the teeth at her throat until they had swallowed her whole. Poor little Red who walked into the Wolf’s warm embrace.

Poor little Wanda, no family, no home, no innocence.

**“Nice is different than Good.” -Into the Woods**

-

“I always liked the version of Little Red Riding Hood where she cut herself out of the wolf.” Sam has brought the movie ‘Into the Woods’ for the team to watch for what he claims to be a therapy session.

“That version is not popular.” Wanda knew that version of the story, her grandmother had enjoyed that version more.

“Blame men.” Sam shrugged. “In the old versions of the stories the men are so unimportant it’s laughable. Snow White’s Prince doesn’t even kiss her, he just drops her coffin.” Sam looks at her with a knowing smile. “Red cuts herself out of the wolf with the knife she always carries and tells the Woodsman to get fucked.”

Wanda doesn’t believe in fate, or that suffering has a purpose. However, she thinks becoming an Avenger might be the closest thing to redemption she will ever get.

-

_**“The wolf is a carnivore incarnate and he’s cunning as he is ferocious; once he’s had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.” –Angela Carter** _

There is another version of the story, one she watches with Sam after a long day of training. In this version the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood are the same person. When she removes her cloak, her blood lust takes over.

Red eats the heart out of her love.

It seems a strange version of events at the time. How could the little girl be the monster and herself?

Sitting in a prison below the ocean, with a collar on her neck, placed there by people she had trusted, Wanda thought “Oh, that’s how.”

_**“We either live happily ever after or we get killed by horrible curses.” –Wolf, The 10 th Kingdom** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading so far folks.
> 
> Small break in posting for the weekend. I have my mom in town so I will have 0 time on my computer. posting resumes on Monday!
> 
> [I can still answer things on tumblr though!](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	6. Cinderella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have Courage And Be Kind (strangle a man with your thighs.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew this was gonna be Nat from the second I had this idea.

 

You wear your party dress

But there’s no party to attend

Did you know, when your story’s told

They are leaving out what your future holds?

Alice, Mononoke

 

 

“There she had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. Besides this, the sisters did everything imaginable to hurt her. They made fun of her, scattered peas and lentils into the ashes for her, so that she had to sit and pick them out again.” –Jacob Grimm

“I never liked Cinderella.” Natasha states, interrupting Sam’s movie. The gasp he lets out would make is Ma proud, pearl clutching and all.

“Natasha Romanov, you especially should not speak ill of the strongest princess.” Sam was slightly pleased he got to make this comparison. Cinderella got such a bad rap these days. No one wanted to put their money behind the princess that seemed soft and demure. Little did they realize there was courage in being soft.

“Explain.” Natasha is good like that, others might have given him a snap back or tried to argue that he was wrong. Natasha liked all the fact before she made judgements. There was a reason she had read all of the SHEILD database. (Not her fault that a third of the files were secretly kept by Hydra.)

“I would think that someone who was made to endure terrible things and still retain her goodness would recognize her spirit Princess.” Sam added his megawatt smile, it might not actually ‘work’ on Romanov but she appreciated it.

Sam did not have Natasha’s dedication to reading every file that was released, in the database; but he had read all the relevant information on the Tin Soldier he was now attempting to track down. Turned out that little Nat had spent a lot of time in the same place they had kept Steve’s Prince Charming.

He had read maybe a quarter of what they did to Natasha. Yet here she was, dimples and smiles living a life. They had put her through the gauntlet, expecting to produce an empty shell on the other side. Instead she had come through it all the Princess that she really was.

“Making a lot of assumptions on my character there bird boy.” Her face did that thing where it laughed at him. That was pure magic. Sam had seen vets go through less than a sixth of what Natasha had endure and never be able to smile again, not even internally. Girls really are magic. Natasha in particular.

“Not really. You came out on the other side a good person Natasha. Never doubt that.” If she blinked a little that might have looked like tears he wouldn’t mention it. Bro code clearly stated that you let your bros pretend they weren’t crying. “Also that whole secret identity thing she pulls off, so you.”

That earns him a laugh. It’s a small laugh but it’s what Sam wanted.

“Doesn’t she let the birds peck out the eyes of her Step mother and sisters in the original?” Natasha asks, knowing she is right. Sam knows for a fact that the moment he started bringing up Fairy Tales Ms ‘I-shrug-when-faced-with-the-idea-of-breaking-into-a-top-level-security-military-facility’ Romanov went out and read every single one of the stories. Which is honestly such a Cinderella thing to do.

“Being good isn’t mutually exclusive with payback.”

“Huh.”

“And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived.” –Jacob Grimm

She remembers a time when there was nothing but the pain. Pain in the feet. Pain in her ribs. Pain in her hands. Pain in her hands.

Some days that past felt like another lifetime, it all happened in another language. She could almost pretend it was some past life that had no hold on who she was today. Except for the fact that she still had all of the skills. Except for the fact that she had the scars.

**_“My father's house was a nightmare; your house was a dream. Now I want something in between.”-Into The Woods_ **

Natasha had done a lot of terrible things in her life. She didn’t deny that. In fact she pulled that truth into her very core and held onto it like an anchor. Sam might have called it reclaiming her trauma. Natasha called it knowing her true self.

She was covered in ash. Hands and face blackened by her work.

Yet, everyone seemed to think she glowed. Captain America, Steve Rogers, thought she was a good person. The nicest human to have ever been born thought she was worth saving.

Clint Barton, with an order to kill her, had risked his career to get her out of Russia. Like an idiot he had taken one look at her, his face bloodied from her fists, and tried to whisk her away from her father’s house.

What kind of woman took the horrible nickname given to her by her abusers and wore it like a badge of honor?

Natasha Romanov. That’s who.

“If you don’t like Cinderella because she seems so ‘naive’ and ‘weak,’ listen to this quote from Walt himself: She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believe in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn’t come along, she went over to the palace and got him.” -Walt Disney Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you have any idea how hard it is to find cool Cinderella quotes? Way harder than it should be.
> 
> I get lonely on tumblr when no one loves on me.


	7. The Little Mermaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He becomes sea foam, a green film in the ocean. Just like his other self.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first day that I had the idea for this story I said to myself "who is Bruce going to get for a story?" my brain shot back "The Little Mermaid" at full volume. I legit did not understand why my brain was so set on this idea until I started writing it. 
> 
> The song for this chapter does not match the tone of the chapter. I really liked the lyrics and wanted them as part of this chapter. If you want a better 'mood' song for this chapter listen to Saturn by Sleeping at Last and then cry about Bruce. I blame Mark, he really made Bruce Banner someone I could love and cry about.

You make it seem that you feel whole,

So they don’t know you’re a poor unfortunate soul

Holy, PVRIS

-

“Alright see as we are all getting Disney Princess spirit animals from Birdman the sequel, who’s Bruce?” Sam isn’t even offended by the nickname.

“Easy, The Little Mermaid.”

“What?”

“The original version. With the blood and death.”

“Why not a werewolf story?”

“You asked about Bruce, not Hulk.” Sam shook his head. “Bruce is his own person, man.”

-

_**“I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess.” –Hans Christian Anderson** _

If you had asked him what fairy tale he thought he connected with closest he wouldn’t have had an answer. The rest of the world might have said something about Beauty and the Beast or The Swan Princess. It was nice to realize that at least someone didn’t seem as an extension of alter ego. (Tony saw him for his brain, not his personality.)

Bruce Banner had never read the original little mermaid. He had the time these days. Bruce thinks he might understand why Sam picked this story for him. He sits on a beach in a forgotten part of the world feeling a connection to Ariel.

Bruce had reached for something beyond his grasp, not humanity but a perfection of humanity. Obsessed with the Captain America serum from a young age Brue had been certain he could unlock it.  He had made a deal with a sea witch and her name was gamma radiation.

_**“Then your tail will divide and shrink until it becomes what the people on earth call a pair of shapely legs. But it will hurt; it will feel as if a sharp sword slashed through you. Everyone who sees you will say that you are the most graceful human being they have ever laid eyes on, for you will keep your gliding movement and no dancer will be able to tread as lightly as you. But every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to suffer all this?" –Hans Christian Anderson** _

She took his voice. She made it so that every step he look felt like pure agony. The live wire of energy that he spent every hour of every day attempting to contain. The pounding in his head. The knowledge that he was Other, not of this world only in it. People he had trusted and admired had wanted to lock him up until his life was over. Others saw him as a monster, an abomination. He was a perversion of the perfection of humanity he had striven for. This was the painful reality he shared with Ariel.

No wonder Disney left these parts out.

_**“Never had she danced so beautifully; the sharp knives cut her feet, but she did not feel it, for the pain in her heart was far greater” –Hans Christian Anderson** _

Bruce’s second deal had gone much the same as the poor mermaid. His death or the death of the Other guy. To let SHEILD or whoever control the other guy and wreck that world with a knife in the shape of a giant green man. If he wanted to continue to be human, to be a person in all aspects he would need to have blood on his hands.

So Bruce became sea foam. Took the knife to his own heart to spare others the suffering. Death didn’t always mean literal death. There was such a thing as death of self. Bruce Banner would let the person he was, the person he had been, the person he wanted to be, die to spare the lives of others.

Some nights he swims out to the deepest part of the ocean he is willing to go and lets himself truly be sea foam, float in the near nothingness he has become.

_**“Mermaids have no tears, and therefore they suffer more.” –Hans Christian Anderson** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! Please let me know what you guys are thinking/enjoying so far? I feel like I haven't gotten a lot of responses and I am not sure if it's just because this is WIP or if no one agrees with my fairy tale story choices. 
> 
> Hans Christian Anderson was straight up brutal when he created The Little Mermaid. I swear. Want a story that's going to tear you to shreds? Read The Little Mermaid.   
> [I enjoy company on my tumblr page. I have weird headcannons, plot ideas, and more.](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	8. Rapunzel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Prince wanders in the desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of thoughts about Clint Barton. First off, fuck the movies for removing so much of what makes him the person he is. Secondly, my son is a depressive asshole and i love him. 
> 
>  
> 
> So the first few chapters I linked the official playlist for this fic. I thought perhaps some people might like the "writing playlist" that includes rejected songs. [ Enjoy the music here. ](https://play.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/2XgRi39zIsmO0sHhNBiRBT)

I like to stick to walls

Observing conversations and lifting them when they fall

I am a fire escape, my spine’s made of iron

My heart pumps that old red paint

Save yourself, save yourself, yourself

Fire Escape, Foster The People

 

-

“I wish they had kept it where the Prince goes blind.” Sam sighs, ruining Tangled for Clint.

“Stop that. Stop trying to ruin all of my feel good movies.” Clint smacks him off the sofa.

“Man, you should love the original…”

“NO!” Clint get up. “I am not Rapunzel.” 

“Of course not, you are the Prince.” Sam’s smile is too devious by half. Being an Avenger really is a trail.

“Ugh.”

-

**_“The man, who loved her, thought, sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.” -Jacob Grimm_ **

A few months later, when Clint has too much coffee in his system and Lucky is snoring so loud Clint can FEEL it he looks up the original Rapunzel tale.

The first part doesn’t seem like anything to him. A pregnant woman craving greens sounds like an outright lie. It’s when the witch catches the dumb husband that his brain starts to itch. She takes the baby and locks the child in a tower where the rest of the world can’t touch her.

Clint thinks about Natasha in the Red Room, stuck in a place she couldn’t leave or escape by people who had great power over her. He climbed that metaphysical tower to get her out, didn’t he? 

When the Prince is pushed out of the tower, blinded by thorns, Clint has to stop reading for a full ten minutes. 

**_“The king’s son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.”- Jacob Grimm_ **

He’s such an idiot. What can a guy with a bow and arrow do against villains who could alter reality or bend space time? What could that Prince have done against a witch who could bend plants to her will? Nothing, it’s why the idiot didn’t even have a name. What kind of character never gets a name? The kind who doesn’t matter.

The truth was Clint hadn’t climbed that tower for Natasha. He had been climbing it when he happened upon her. Clint Barton, the kid who grew up in the circus had looked up at a tower on the horizon and seen that it needed to be climbed. Not for any one person. Not for himself even. He had put hand over hand because it was the thing to do, because if he wanted to be able to live with himself he had to do something about what was happening in the world. 

The Prince wanders in the desert, blind, for years. The idiot. He doesn’t give up. God, Clint is going to punch Sam so hard the next time he sees him. 

In the end the Prince gets his sight back when Rapunzel cries on him. No one is going to cry into Clint’s ears and fix them. He is doing to be deaf forever. 

He sits in his dump of an apartment in the middle of the night and thinks about why Sam would think Clint is the Prince from Rapunzel. Besides the obvious parallel of disabilities. He’s an avenger and yet he lives here, barely speaking to his friends. (Kate notwithstanding.) His life feels like wandering in the desert, aimless, without any real meaning. 

What was that quote? “Sometimes a desert isn’t really a place filled with sand and nothingness. Sometimes it just the nothingness.”

Clint thinks maybe it’s time for him to come out of the desert. 

**_“He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it,”-Jacob Grimm_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again for reading!
> 
> [ Please come love on me on Tumblr. ](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	9. Persephone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you live a life divided?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor proved way more difficult than I thought he would be. I don't have a good read on this guy. 
> 
> All of my energy right now is focused on wrapping up Bucky's chapter. His is the one I came here to write and honestly the one most of you are probably here to read. I figure after that is finished someone might care. Not that those of you reading aren't someone. i am just very very dedicated to this
> 
> [ Official Playlist for the fic](https://play.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)
> 
> [ My writing playlist. ](https://play.spotify.com/user/1278199746/playlist/6MR4HzBFTIkhiV7ShrDzEJ)

We’re making enemies, knocking on the devil’s door

But how can you expect me not to eat,

When the forbidden fruit tastes so sweet?

Sinners, Lauren Aquilina

 

-

“Sam son of Will, I hear you are giving each of a personal mythos.” 

“Oh yeah,” Sam agrees absentmindedly. Where did he put that wrench? 

“Have I been given my own tale of old?” Thor’s jovial voice sounds slightly strained.

“Nah, you get Persephone.” Sam pulls the wrench from between the drawers of his desk. Victory.

“Is she not a goddess?” Thor inquires.

“She is your princess dude.” Sam offers and gets back to trying to reassemble the wrist portion of his wings before Tony finds out he took it apart in the first place. 

-

**_“She that was so proud and wild, flippant, arrogant and free, she that had no need of me.”-Edna St. Vincent Millay_ **

Erik Selvig provides Thor with the text of this tale. Thor is amused to find the story is of a goddesses.

There are two versions of the story in the books Erik Selvig gifts to him. In the first version of the story a Goddess named Kore find the underworld and decides she loves it. She chooses to stay with her found love, Hades, in his realm and protect it.

Her mother has other ideas. Thor feels a cold trickle down his spine as he reads this tale of a mother willing to kill everything to have her daughter returned.

At the end of the tale the high God renames the Goddess Kore, Persephone which means destroyer. In the second version of the story Persephone eats a forbidden fruit and still her mother tries to wreck the world. 

**_“What the myth founds is a double existence between the upper world and the underworld: a dimension of death is introduced into life, and a dimension of life is introduced into death.” -Walter Burket_ **

The tale feels familiar when Thor is finished reading. He feels keenly connected to the small goddess who is forced into a duality of life.

Her love and duty to her husband in the world below. A world that was not meant for her, yet one that she has chosen for herself. Earth with its many wonders and kind people. Jane’s eyes when she thinks of something smart to say. Steve’s little head shake when Thor says something funny. The ease of friendship with the others. A sense of belonging, ownership to this Midgard.

Persephone had another duty, to family and to the powers that came with it. Asgard in its golden splendor. The throne that sat waiting for Thor. A weight and a burden of responsibility that Thor could not escape. 

Thor did not have a mother that raged at his loss. His mother was the one who was lost. Instead Thor had a changeling brother who would burn the world, or worlds, down over imagined slights. 

My brother, my burden. 

Thor felt a kinship to this small story. He realized that just because his heart was torn in two, dedicated to two realms, he could still be happy.Sam son of Will was truly a gifted healer. 

**_“…even the goddess Persephone is happy, if only for half each year.”- C.F. Joyce_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you pumped for Bucky's chapter next? I am. 
> 
> It might be an extra 24 hours before you get it because I realized I need to add another section. Also looking for all these quotes takes time and i am a few short on his chapter right now. 
> 
> If not tomorrow expect the chapter on saturday.
> 
> [ I would love words of encouragement.](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)


	10. The Ballad of Tam Lin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Dreamer awakes  
> The shadow goes by  
> The tale I have told you,  
> That tale is a lie.  
> But listen to me,  
> Bright maiden, proud youth  
> The tale is a lie;  
> What it tells is the truth." -Traditional Folktale Ending 
> 
> Is there really such a thing as happily ever after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to the only chapter that has something might be considered plot, except for Sam’s final chapter. For those of you not familiar with the Ballad of Tam Lin I have tried to explain it in about three different ways here. If that’s still unclear follow [THIS LINK for a version with mostly modern English.](http://www.kitsuneyama.com/Mountain/Bardic/Songs/tamlin.htm)  
> Some notes on this chapter: There is cursing in this chapter. I can’t write soldiers in WWII and not have the word Fuck. I am not upping the rating because it’s not a mature story. 
> 
> This chapter is extremely nonlinear. None of these events are in order. However every scene in this chapter has a partner, the other half of its couplet because Tam Lin is traditionally a ballad (sung poetry) I wanted to allude to that concept with the structure of this story. Some pairs are based on events or phrases, others on themes or concepts. 
> 
> Symbols are a big part of Tam Lin. A ring signifies allegiance or fealty. A mantle is what we might call a standard now, a coat of arms. At the time the Ballad is set a mantle would have been a piece of cloth. While maidenhead has the traditional significance it’s important to note that the concept of a maidenhead in many areas is more about the bloodletting than the sexual state of either partner. In certain variations of the Ballad Janet gives Tam Lin all three. Steve and Bucky exchange variations of these symbols in this chapter.   
> This is the chapter that basically makes this entire story worth it. This is the part that had me vibrating in my car on the drive home from work because I had to be in a car for too long and I couldn’t be writing all the thoughts I was having about Bucky. 
> 
> We have a couple of themes running through here and I would like to point them out because I worked hard. The concept of names and the power of names is a very old and standard idea in fairy tales. Jumping off from that a similar theme of identity. Tam Lin is a story about holding on and recognizing a love even when tricked by fairies, these themes are present in many parts of this chapter. 
> 
> One of the readers recently told me that they thought it was an interesting choice to include Greek mythology in a story about fairy tales. Greek Mythology might not be traditionally considered fairy tales but these stories contain all the hallmarks of a good fairy tale. The power of names. Mortals snatched from their lives. Having to outsmart a being that could be a god. Tragic and sometimes despondent endings for those willing to challenge a higher power. I have a lot of feelings about fairy tales if you haven’t noticed.
> 
> I want to thank Nina and Nicole for this chapter in particular. Nina for putting up with me emailing her at weird hours of the night demanding she read while listening to certain songs and live respond her reactions. I also want to thank Nicole, the most discerning Bucky fan ever, who really pointed out some things that needed work and helped me round out the characterization of our boys. 
> 
> This is where I put a non-relevant story about writing this. I am so inspired by my father when it comes to writing Steve. Firstly because my dad was born in 1945 and had a lot of shared live experiences when it comes to things Steve and Bucky would have experienced in early life. Secondly my dad was a stubborn wiseass who took nearly every No to mean Try Me.
> 
> When my dad was in school he was labeled as ‘slow’, now at the time that was a blanket term for hard to teach. It wouldn’t be until I was diagnosed with Dyslexia that he would have a real name for what he was struggling with. The point is that in 1950 they put him in a class with easier to read books and didn’t let him read anything hard. Well he took OFFENSE to that. My dad went out and bought all the hard books the other kids were reading and made himself read them. When I was diagnosed with Dyslexia he bought me a copy of the book Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, one of the first books he read from the hard list, and told me that no one was ever allowed to tell me I wasn’t smart or intelligent. 
> 
> I think Steve Rogers and my dad would have gotten along like a house on fire. 
> 
> I am so incredibly pleased with this chapter I cannot fully express in words how much I love it. I hope you love it a fraction of the amount that I do. 
> 
> Lastly, if I reference something here you might not know. [ Please feel free to ask me if something is unclear to you. ](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)

Call me by my real name

Say my name out loud

Call me by my real name

Call me crazy

And can you save me?

Or move me?

He moves me

I’m moving

And can you save me?

Or move me?

Move Me, Wet

-

**_“Words have meaning and names have power.”-Unknown Author_ **

He had a memory of a story, from before.

The story went like this.

A boy was stolen from everything he knew and loved by someone evil. The boy was made to endure terrible things. One day the boy met a person in the woods. The boy demanded boon, a bloodletting, a gift from this stranger in the woods. The stranger gives it. The boy loves the stranger.

The stranger promises to free the boy from his torment. The boy wears a silver glove. The boy wears a mask. The evil makes the boy hurt the stranger. The boy becomes a monster. The boy burns the stranger.

The boy is freed.

When he thinks of the story he can hear an accent that sounds rough and makes him think of a gun on a hill with sea flavored wind in his mouth.

He hates this memory.

There is no freedom.

 

**_“Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.” – Alice Hoffman_ **

-

“Steve?”

“Yeah Buck?”

“Are you reading the Iliad and the Odyssey because I am off to basic?” Bucky holds up the grubby books from the library and Steve knows he has been caught. He feels his small shoulder square at the look on his friend’s face. They haven’t talked about it, this leaving, by some unspoken terrible mutual agreement.

“They seemed like appropriate choices now that I am being left alone while you go off to war.” It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much. No one talked about how painful being left behind felt. Steve thought maybe the Greeks would have good advice about how to be left behind.

“I’m off to training, you diva.” Bucky shook his head. “I am not going to be lost at sea for ten years.”

“I don’t know, you are terrible at directions outside of the city.” Steve gave Bucky a mocking concerned face. “You might make a wrong turn somewhere.” There was a forced casualness to this conversation that burned.

“Oh yeah, wiseass?” Bucky set down the Iliad and looked at the Odyssey. “What you gonna do? Host a party for all my ex girlfriends and auction off yourself to the best dancer.” Bucky’s smile was sharp and slightly painful.

“I thought you said you hadn’t read the Odyssey.” Steve had read it before but a second read was never a bad idea. He always learned new things the second time around, things he had missed the first time through the story.

“I haven’t, I remember you hollering the last time you read it about Penelope and all the suitors.”

“Yes, well I won’t wait for you to return before I start beating people up.” Steve shrugged putting an extra flair into the movement to show Bucky he couldn’t be bothered to wait. The concept of waiting was not something Steve was comfortable with.

“You know out of the two of us, I don’t think I’m the one who is cocky enough to piss off the Gods and get sent on a ten year punishment trip.” Bucky quirks a brow at Steve, teasing.

“I don’t know, I can name at least three Brooklyn mamas that wouldn’t mind sending you on a ten year punishment trip.” Steve teased.

“But Steve, I get sea sick.” Bucky widened his eyes in mock terror. Steve throws a towel at him and they let the subject drop.

Still Steve thinks about the Odyssey for the next several days. He reckons if Bucky were to be lost for a year or a decade Steve would still recognize him. He wouldn’t need a competition with a bow to be able to pick his best friend out of a crowd.

Steve, with his bad eyes and weak heart, could spot Bucky’s hair at fifteen yards. He didn’t even need Bucky in the same room to draw him anymore. Steve had sketch books filled with parts of his friend. Anatomy studies focused on the crinkles around Bucky’s eyes. A full page of lips, Bucky smiling, Bucky teasing, Bucky frustrated, Bucky disappointed.

This war was going to make a Penelope out of Steve, if he couldn’t enlist. Left at home with a life that was half filled. It terrified him.

**_“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” - The Song of Achilles_ **

-

Sam had to break out the big guns when it came to Steve. The guy, honestly, was going to try and blunt his sorrow against the edge of the world. Not healthy habits.

Sam buys the two of them tickets to see a production of Tam Lin on Halloween, months into the thus futile search for a ghost. Steve puts up a fuss. (“A play?” “Put on your damn button down shirt and get in the car before I call Nat for back up.”)

The thing was, Steve knew what his story was but he didn’t know Bucky’s story. Steve, the biggest drama queen this side of World War II, needed a narrative or he would crash another damn plane in frustration.

If there was a story out there meant for poor James “Bucky” Barnes, it was Tam Lin. The level of parallels and symbolism was staggering. It was almost like Hydra had a thing for the story. Or perhaps the universe liked narratives that rhymed. At this point either could be true.

-

**_“Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslateable.”- W. H. Auden_ **

There are protocols for situations like this. Procedures of long forgotten times. Get out from behind enemy lines. Establish a command base. Find supplies.

His thoughts have accents. His thoughts have many languages. He traces the sounds across the world.

There is a city with a smell that hurts, iron in the sky and garbage in the streets. The voices are wrong. He moves East. There is a memory of orders to push east, towards the mountains.

He stands on the top of a hill in a land by the sea. There is a forest to his back and a village down a stone road through those trees.

Is this a story or is this real? Is this a memory?

It starts to rain. A man comes along in an old car and stops near the hill where He stands. The man gets out of the car and sets a basket at the base of the hill. The man sings as he leaves in a voice that clips certain sounds and rolls others out.

“O I forbid you, maidens a’,

That wear gold on your hair,

To come or game by Carterhaugh,

For young Tam Lin is there.”

The basket is addressed to Tam Lin.

He wonders if that’s his name. It’s not the name the man on the bridge called him. That name hurts him to think of, long dead punishments beating against his brain.

He needs a name.

There were baskets and notes at trees and hills across the land. Many addressed to Tam Lin. He took the food and the money and the wood carvings left near the stones and the hills and the trees. He took the name when he left that land, pushing east.

-

**_“Into the woods - - you have to grope,_ **

**_But that’s the way you learn to cope._ **

**_Into the woods to find there’s hope_ **

**_Of getting through the journey.” – Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods_ **

-

Steven Grant Rogers had been pigheaded from the moment he was born. He had come into the world two weeks earlier than the midwife had predicted.

Steven Grant Rogers had never met a ‘no’ he didn’t meet with a ‘try me’.

Sam Wilson knew stubborn. He had been raised by stubborn. A black woman in DC wanting to get ahead with a little boy needed to be stubborn. His ma could out stubborn just about anyone. Except for perhaps Steven Grant Rogers when it came to James Buchanan Barnes.

These white boys were gonna get Sam killed or locked up, probably both. They were sitting across from each other in a German camping site, not talking, just staring at each other.

Sam had never been so happy to be the least recognizable Avenger.

“Guess who isn’t an internally wanted criminal or a national icon and needs away from you two? Me. I’m getting tacos. They have tacos here right?” Sam asks the two monoliths who are currently pretending they are people. Steve at least looks capable of human emotion and speech right now. “I am going to be gone for three… no four hours. In that time the two of you are going to talk or kiss or get angrily naked together,” Steve Blushes (capital B because it’s a full body blush) and Bucky looks like he is sucking a lemon. (Clint owes Sam all the money. Sam Wilson knew when he was being flirted with, and Steve Rogers apparently flirts by being competitive at exercises. The sad thing was it wasn’t the weirdest way someone had flirted with Sam.) “And when I get back we are going to be less…”Sam motions between the two of them.

When he gets back a few hours later with enough food to feed a family of four for a week Sam notices that the two super-idiots look rumpled and slightly dopey. Bucky has leaves in his hair and sticking out the edge of his pants. Steve might actually be bruising in some very tell tale places. About time.

-

**_“They’ll turn me in your arms, lady, into an esk and an adder, but hold me fast, and fear me not,” - The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

He had promised Ma that he would be good. She had smoothed his hair down and kissed him on the cheek outside the school but he had insisted on walking into school by himself. He was a big boy and a big brother now.

He counts his breaths so he won’t cry. Big brothers don’t cry on their first day of school.

One. He has new shoes. Two. Ma made oatmeal for breakfast. Three. He was wearing his best shirt. Four. This weekend they were going to the beach. Five. The building of the school looks scary now that Ma isn’t here.

“You’re gonna be late.” A boy is standing next to him. He is about Bucky’s size, maybe a little smaller. They are dressed nearly identical. “If you’re late you don’t get to pick your seat.”

“Okay.”

Ten. There are a lot of big kids inside. Eleven. What comes after eleven?

The boy sits in the desk next to him.

“My name is Steve. What’s your name?” the boy asks. Steve asks.

“My name is Bucky.”

**_“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” –W.C. Fields_ **

 

**_-_ **

****

Poets talked about how those we love never leave us. Writers told Steve that his heart would hold the people important to him no matter what happened to them.

It was true, but they all left out a very important piece of information, what happened to that part of your heart. Bucky had been with him for as long as Steve could remember. A large corner of his heart dedicated to the boy and then the man who shaped so much of what he was.

It wasn’t that Steve defined himself in context of Bucky, it was that he didn’t have to define himself as long as he had Bucky. Before the serum Steve would have nightmares about floating away, how death would take him softly into the sky now that there was so little to tether him to this world. No foundation of parents to ground his slight bones to the earth. In those horrible dreams the only thing that was ever there to fight off the Grimm Reaper had been Bucky. His hero. His friend. His partner. His brother. His last real connection.

He had always understood there was a chance one of them wouldn’t make it home, or maybe both. But that had seemed like such an impossibility, even at the height of the war. Nothing was going to take Bucky from him.

**_“As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.” –The Song of Achilles_ **

His heart had gone supernova, expanding beyond its limits until it collapsed into itself. Steve had a black hole where that part of him that WAS Bucky should be. It ate at him in a way no one ever seemed to know or understand. Nothing could feed a black hole. Every breath felt like he was fighting gravity to just expand his chest. He could feel the wind blowing through him from where his heart had ripped his ribs open. There was no fixing this kind of hurt.

Now, here in the future Steve found that there was something that could stop a black hole. A piece of his heart, returned.

“If you think for one second you are getting away from me again you have another thing coming.” Steve tells him.

“What are you going to do Steve? Hold me down until I say uncle?” Bucky sounded two parts angry and one part tired. He is holding Steve’s shield in his hands, draped across his thighs in the dark woods like a blanket.

“If that’s what it fucking takes.” The smile Bucky gave him, it was the sun rising, it was hot chocolate on a cold day, it was the smell of his mother’s perfume, it was everything he had been missing in life.

**_“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” –Mae West_ **

-

Steve was looking thin. Steve always looked thin if Bucky was being honest. The problem was Steve didn’t take charity. Bucky couldn’t just give Steve more food or pay for something. He had tried that and learned his lesson quickly.

“I’m full, you finish of the cracker jacks.” Bucky passed the small box to Steve while patting his stomach.

“Come on Buck.” Steve looks at him like he ain’t buying this load of shit.

“Honest Steve, I couldn’t eat another bite.” Steve narrowed his eyes at Bucky for a moment before finally putting some of the snack into his mouth and chewing while maintaining eye contact. This kid.

They go back to walking through the park, their dates now long gone.

“You keep the prize,” Steve hands him a tiny copper ring shining gold in the afternoon sun. Bucky slips the ring into his pocket with a laugh.

“Can’t have the girls seeing me with a ring Steve that would be real trouble.” Steve rolls his eyes and pushes Bucky with his shoulder, but he finishes the cracker jacks.

**_“There’s none that goes by Carterhaugh but they leave him a wad, either their rings, or green mantles, or else their maidenhead.”- The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

-

At camp they make Steve tell them stories. While marching or on a mission the Howlies took turns telling stories. Gabe tells stories about Lords and Ladies, he had read too much French in school. Jim was all about the funny stories. He told tall tales of giants with memory problems and gods who got drunk on the sun. Monty told stories about old ladies who bickered with every breath and school teachers that turned into detectives. Frenchie’s stories always had so many explosions, he like adding the noises. Bucky told stories about princesses and knights, kings and queens, dragons and wizards. ‘I got kid sisters.’ He always explained.

Steve had the memory for real stories. A good mind turned razor sharp by the serum. They didn’t have books and they certainly didn’t have pictures to go see. The closest thing they had to a wireless show was Steve Rogers’s memory. He put some real effort into it. Different voices, making funny faces, hand motions when appropriate.

The Howlies had taken a single camp fire located between their tents and far enough from the latrine ditches that nothing stank. They had a mission tomorrow but they at least got to stay at camp tonight where other people got to worry about keeping watch.

Today Steve was working through what he remembered of The Iliad.

Bucky had never read it before. He knew vaguely the story, of course he did he was friends with Steve Rogers. These great heroes weren’t Bucky’s speed, they all seemed to blood thirsty and ready for glory. He preferred the kinds of stories Becca picked out, Elizabeth Bennet and her pride and many sisters felt more real to him. Bucky thought he might be sick of stories about war and death when this was all over. He would read every fainting lady romance rather than another war story.

What was the point of all of these men beating their chests for pride and glory? Bucky understood fighting a war to save lives, to end the suffering of nations. He didn’t understand following a man into a war over a single woman or a single promise. Who followed a man like that into battle?

Before Steve had appeared above him in that horrible room Bucky had been certain that Adonis didn’t exist. Now his best friend was a shining splendid version of what all humanity could hope to be. Maybe he did understand this story a little better than he thought.

“All I’m saying is what kind of guy fights a river God?” Dum Dum questions when Steve pauses for water, as if this is a conversation they are already having.

“He’s grieving you wanker.” Monty throws a rock at Dum Dum and Jim laughs. Steve doesn’t start back up because now it’s clearly time for the peanut gallery to put in their two cents. Bucky rolls his eyes and pulls out some of his knives and gear that need a better going over. This accomplishes two things, gives him something to do and possibly gives him weapons to throw when the guys fall to their eventual argument.

“There’s grief and then there’s killing so many people that a river god tells you to stop and then you fucking fight him too.” Dum Dum shakes his head. “What the fuck does a river god even look like?” Bucky groans knowing he is about to join this argument because Steve looks ready to say something really stupid.

“Have you not been paying fu-“

“Gentlemen.” Agent Carter is standing directly behind Bucky, he knew that because everyone was now looking about two feet above his head and Steve was trying to go into full military attention pose while remaining seated. “I need to borrow the Captain for a meeting.” Steve was now suddenly on his feet like the process of standing up didn’t even exist. “I am sure your story will be willing to wait.”

Steve follows her looking equal parts terrified and in love. It makes Bucky laugh. It took a war for Steve to find a girl worthy of him, figures.

“How many guys you know willing to fight a fucking river?” Dum Dum starts again as if there has been no interruption.

“You forget that he is grieving his love, his soul mate.” Gabe explains. Frenchie adds something extremely sappy in French to this comment. Bucky is half glad his French is only passable because what he caught sounds extremely gooey.

“Still ya gotta be off your rocker to do that shit. That’s some Eight ball nonsense.”

“Like we don’t personally know a crazy mother fucker ourselves.” Monty interjects and then the entire circle of men has gone quiet and they are all looking at Bucky.

“Wha?” He had only been half following the conversation, more of his mind focused on cleaning and sharpening his hunting knives.

“Brothers, we vow, right here, right now to protect the Sarge with our lives.” Jim says in an overly grave tone of voice. That tone of voice means nothing good for anyone.

“I don’t know. I’d pay good money to watch the Captain fight a fucking river.” Dum Dum added with a sly grin. The grin was ruined by the sheer size of his mustache. Nothing looks sly under a mustache that size.

Bucky finally catches on to where this is going. “Oh fuck you.” He flicks a rag at Jim, because he started this. “I am not fucking Patroclus.”

“Of course you aren’t fucking Patroclus, Achilles is.” Jim’s smile was shit eating.

Steve makes it until they are getting into their bunks that night before he asks.

“Is there a reason Dum Dum made me promise never to fight a river?”

“Same reason Jim has sworn to call me Not Fucking Patroclus for all eternity.” Bucky huffs. Steve’s face does a dance. His brows pull in and his mouth turns down for a few moments before everything shoots upward on his face. He smiles at Bucky like he has just been given new ammunition for verbal torture which he has.

“I promise not to fight a river god if you die.” Steve is barely containing a giggle.

“You’re the worst.”

“I also promise not to murder rape anyone who looks like you.” Steve continues, in mock gravity.

“The Greeks are fucked up but that cannot be part of the story.” What is wrong with Achilles?

“Only in the terrible versions.” Steve still looks on the edge of a snorting laugh. “I promise not tell that version.”

“You better not. I don’t need that in my life. Tell something safe, like that story about the doctor who makes a monster.”

“Frankenstein or Doctor Jekyll?”

“Frankenstein.” Bucky answers. “We can make lots of jokes about your ugly mug.” Steve stands up.

“I’m going to go requisition a new best friend. This one is defective.” Bucky throws a boot at him.

**_“If I could rewrite out story, I’d erase our names from history, and carve them into stone instead. I’d rather us be forgotten together, than remembered apart.” - I’d Jump, I’d Fall._ **

-

These are the things he knows:

In his first life his name was James Buchanan Barnes, called Bucky by anyone who mattered.

In his second life his name was Asset.

In this life he was calling himself Thomas, or Toma in this city. He picked it from the baskets in the country that smelled like the sea and old green things.

He knew the faces of all the people he had killed. He wrote down their names or what he thought their names might be. A third of the list was simply “Soldier in the war” over and over again.

He didn’t like getting his hair cut.

He could quote the entire Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America. He was certain it wasn’t the whole story.

The little old lady three floors down makes amazing potato pancakes and likes to talk poetry at him.

If he wants he could jump to the building across the street and barely feel it.

His metal arm can rip his shirts when he gets angry.

Jazz music makes him sad.

He counts in Russian in his head.

He can sleep at night after looking at pictures of Steven Grant Rogers.

He misses the sound of a laugh.

Bananas taste wrong.

Some mornings before he was fully awake he would listen for the sound of coughs, ready for action if he could hear even a single one.

He stopped here because he couldn’t remember why he had been traveling east.

He doesn’t like books labeled Science Fiction or Dystopian YA. Mysteries are okay. History books are good for learning but make his head hurt. He likes poetry. He likes Romance.

He missed something he couldn’t name.

Pictures of mountains were upsetting.

He didn’t like trains.

The color blue makes him sad.

He would not go find Steven Grant Rogers. He wouldn’t.

**_“That from my horse I feel, The Queen of Fairies she caught me, in yon green hill to dwell. And pleasant is that fairy land, but, an eerie tale to tell, at the end of every seven years, we pay a tithe to Hell, I am so fair and firm of flesh, I’m feared it be myself.”- The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

-

Bucky had always been lean. Looking back Steve couldn’t say if that was his natural build or if it had been childhood and then The Depression that kept his friend reed thin. He was not thin now.

“What have you been eating?” Steve joked because food was always a safe topic.

“Everything.” Bucky pushes an entire taco wrapped in schnitzel into his mouth, it looked delicious if Steve was honest. He wrapped his own taco in the flattened pork chop. Bucky was onto something here.

“It shows man.” Sam offers, eating a more normal sized portion of food.

“I really like fruit.” Bucky offers around a mouthful of food. “We didn’t get a lot of fresh fruit when we were kids?” It’s a statement but it sounds like a question.

“It was seasonal back then and expensive to send all the way into the city. We ate the canned stuff mostly.” Steve explains.

“Fresh is better.” Bucky nods and dunks his second schnitzel into the guacamole and then into the fried rice like a double dipped chip.

-

**_“They’ll turn me to a bear so grim, and then a lion bold, but hold fast and fear me not,” -The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

He thinks this is what the heroes from stories must have looked like. David in front of an army ready to face down a monster. Hercules, with his shoulders square and head back. Perseus, blood in his teeth and fire in his spine. Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders. Achilles, wearing gold armor and blood at the dawn of a war.

He wonders what it would take to make Steve let go of him. He wonders what the world would like after that was over. The ruins of the civilizations that had tried to stand between Steve and him.

He thinks he saw it once in a dream, the world that tried to tear them apart. The dust in the sky. Blood soaked so thick into the ground it became mud. Rubble of once great cities crunching under his feet. The shadows and bodies of men who had tried to stand between them. At the other end of a scope, there was Steve in blue with a salute just for him.

**_“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”- Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn_ **

He had read that back at the dawn of humanity people were beings with two heads, four arms, four legs, and two hearts. But they were too powerful and the gods split the creatures in half leaving inferior beings called humans in their place.

If he had another half, if there was a part of him that lived outside the confines of his own body it belonged in Steve Rogers. It was a terrible thought. It meant that half of him was good. It meant that half of him was stubborn beyond words. It meant that there was no shaking Steve, no matter what kind of horror Bucky would turn out to be.

Red threads wrapped around their hearts and connected them to each other. No escaping this. This wasn’t something you escaped.

**_“You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.” -Elias Canetti_ **

-

“Tam Lin isn’t just any old story Steve, it’s a vastly superior Beauty and the Beast.” Sam tried to explain.

“Oh yeah? How so?” Steve the poor soul did not know what he was getting himself into.

“Firstly there is a distinct lack of Stockholm syndrome in this version. Dear Janet goes into the forest and depending on the raunchiness of the story teller she gets it on with a guy she thinks is a fairy or gives him a ring which is old timey for getting nasty in symbolism.”

“Right…”

“Janet, glorious queen that she is, goes home and finds out she is pregnant. She goes back into the woods and tells her man he is going to come back and provide for her. Or they are in love, you know depending on the version. They used to sing this in bars so it really varies.”

“I can imagine.”

“Tam Lin, who knows a woman when she means business, tells her that he is pretty sure the Fairy Queen is going to try and sacrifice him to Hell on Halloween and if she can save him he will marry her and be a proper father.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Right, but this is fairies so nothing is simple. She can only free him on Halloween and only after the fairies have crossed a certain cross roads because they won’t be able to stop or turn back at that point.  All of them are going to be wearing masks so Janet has to find him on his specific horse. Then she has to grab him off the horse.”

“Could be dangerous.”

“That’s not the half of it. The Fairy Queen is going to change him into monsters and if Janet drops him or lets go, the deal is off. He gets turned into a snake, a lizard, a bear, a lion, a molten hot ball of iron, and finally just straight up fire. Janet holds onto him the whole time.”

“Huh.”

“In the end the Fairy Queen lets him go but not before she remarks that she should have taken out his eyes so he could not see and thus fall in love with another. Not that is matters, Janet got her man and beat the system.”

**_“Again they’ll turn me in your arms to a red hot brand of iron, but hold me fast, and fear me not, I’ll do you no harm.”- The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

-

There were two kinds of books about Steve, books that focused on his efforts in the war or books that focused on his relationships. Most of the second kind of books focused on Peggy. There were at least three books that focused solely on the ‘ill-fated romance’ between Margret Carter and Steven Rogers.

It was so strange, the way people seemed to think that romantic love overshadowed all other kinds of love. As if the only way to define a life was with romance. When Steve tried to define himself it never really had anything to do with who he had fallen in love with.

Firstly he was a person. That was always the first definition in his mind. I am a human being. The second was often something along the lines of ‘my parents are Sarah and Joseph.’ Then came the other words; artist, friend, son, feminist, just, striving, small, mama’s boy, soldier, dreamer, brother in arms, freedom fighter.

They never wrote about how much Steve had respected Peggy. They never wrote about how she inspired him to be better. No books talked about the way Peggy and Bucky used to mother him. None of the authors ever touched on the fact that Steve had only really considered Peggy a romantic option once Bucky had said she was swell.

**_“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.” –G.K. Chesterton_ **

Romantic love didn’t used to be this important. Steve remembers a time when people got married barely knowing one another, because it was less about feelings and more about practicality. He remembers a time when the only people crying over the idea of romance were in the movies. Back then he hadn’t been a hit with the girls not for his size but because he didn’t have a steady job that paid enough to support a family. Bucky had been a looker and charming as the devil but every mother in Brooklyn knew James Barnes had a good job and came from a good family.

Did he morn the life he could have had with Peggy? Absolutely. Did it consume him? Not the way some people thought it did.

The one that hurt more was Bucky. There are types of love that are stronger and deeper than romantic love. The kinds that involve a lot more blood.

Steve defined so much more of who he was based on Bucky.

**_“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”- Hans Christian Anderson_ **

-

The doctor had said Steve was going to die. Slip away in the night. His Ma didn’t want him to be in Steve’s room but he was going to be there. There was no chance Steve could go anywhere if Bucky was there to stop him.

He pulls up a chair next to Steve’s bed. Steve’s Ma, Mrs. Rogers, is out in the bigger room with his Ma. He can hear tears.

Steve had always been little, they still had another year before they could really call themselves big boys his ma said, but in bed Steve looked really little. He looked smaller than Becca and she was still a baby.

“Steve?” He asked his best friend. Steve didn’t say anything but he opened his eyes and looked at Bucky. “I need you to hold my hand. You can’t go anywhere if you hold onto me, ya hear?”

Steve doesn’t lift his hand so Bucky picks it up himself, that’s what big brothers and best friends do. Bucky makes himself hold Steve’s hand tight. It’s hard to do, Steve’s hand is really hot. He doesn’t think skin should be this hot.

“Don’t let go Steve.” Bucky instructs. “We swore we’d be friends forever. You hold onto me.”

Bucky was certain death couldn’t take Steve as long as he was here, holding his hand. He had the magic of a big brother to protect others. He was going to use it to protect his best friend.

**_“And last they’ll turn me in your arms into a burning torch,” - The Ballad of Tam Lin_ **

-

He remembers being a big brother. It comes to him so clearly and so often that he realizes it must have been important. So far his mind has only given him death and the man from the museum. This is the first thing that is not about either.

He remembers braiding hair and sweet smiles. There is an echo of a voice and a small weight in smaller arms. ‘You are a big brother now, you have to take care of her.’ It was a bell that rang in his heart, a sound clear and pure that could scare away the darkness.

That’s the next thing he remembers. How much he cared about everyone. How much he still cares. It had been the name of his soul in his first life. He had taken one look at his baby sister and known he would take care of her with every breath in his body. Every time Steve Rogers said something smart or wise or dumb, he had felt his heart beat with affection.

He learned new words these days. Words he might have known once but didn’t anymore. The many words for love. The many words he could use for himself.

He thinks the word for what he felt for his parents, what he felt for his sisters, is Ludus. They feel like birds in his chest, a fluttering feeling. There is a lightness to this knowledge. He had a beginning somewhere in pages of his mind, there is a place with only light.

That’s why Steve Rogers is so bright. He was there when the world was made. He comes from that place that is filled with light and laughter and love.

There is a picture in his mind that stays clear no matter the time of day or how bad he feels or what else his brain has shown him. It’s of a small Steve Rogers telling a joke. He can’t hear the joke in his memory, it’s a silent picture. Steve Rogers tells this joke silently, but not quietly. His face is wide and his eyes laughing. In this memory he knows that he laughs so hard he snorts milk up his nose. What an odd sensation it is, a burning feeling that is also cold. Steve Rogers looks wickedly pleased. A smile that would put the devil to shame, if there is such a thing as a devil. He remembers thinking how much he loved Steve Roger’s mind, how it was the best part of him.

He learns the words for what he feels about Steve Rogers. Friendship. Brother. Companion. Affection. Attraction. Loyalty. Agape.

It’s the best word he has found so far to describe this thing between them. Unconditional. He wonders how long he can stay away. He wonders if there is any point in staying away. He can feel Steve Rogers out there in the world, with his ability to name him waiting for him to return.

**_“Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass.”- Nicola Yoon_ **

-

It doesn’t happen in a day.

It doesn’t happen in a week.

It’s three years before all his edges are smoothed and fit into the puzzle of the shape of a human he wants to be. To be the person Steve sees when he looks at him.

He doesn’t realize that it’s really happened until they are standing on the patio of their home watching the sun paint the sky rose in the fading light.

He finally feels like James Buchanan Barnes. He’s a person. With a name and a life. With a house and friends.

“Steve?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

He finally feels like he deserves that name. He is Bucky.

“Thank you for never letting go.”

Steve holds the back of his neck when he kisses Bucky. No matter if it burns or not.

**_“And then I’ll be your own true-love, I’ll turn a naked knight, Then cover me with your green mantle, and hid me out o sight.” – The Ballad of Tam Lin._ **

-

He doesn’t look at them.

He keeps his head down and counts his breathes. One. He likes the color red. Two. He liked The Once and Future King. Three. Steve Rogers is crap at dancing. Four. Paprika is a good substitute for spicy flavoring. Five. Polyester is a terrible fabric.

They move him. They move the box.

He doesn’t watch Steve Rogers disappear from view. He doesn’t map the floor plans of the facility.

Ten. He doesn’t do that anymore. Eleven. Pine trees smell nice. Twelve. Fall is his favorite season.

A man asks him something. The man uses the wrong name. It’s the name from his first life. That’s not his name now. He is only named by himself and Steve Rogers now. His identities are only those he makes and the one that actually matters.

“My name is Bucky.”

**_“He is half my soul, as the poets say.” – The Song of Achilles_ **


	11. The Fairy Godmother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good fairy godmothers have wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so much fluff and crack. I had to. I need you all to understand that I had no choice in this matter. This is how I write. I got done writing the Bucky chapter (got distracted for three days because my boyfriend bought me a Wacom tablet for our anniversary so i had to play with my new toy) and my brain just went back to my default setting. Mostly. There are parts that are serious.

Our lives are stories, waiting to be told

In search of silver linings, we discover gold

Sinners, Lauren Aquilina

 

-

Sam had forgotten something very important, Janet goes into the forest alone to save Tam Lin. She can’t take her parents or her friends with her. In order to save someone from a fairy queen you have to do it alone.

The water in this place is unnerving. Wanda was unconscious, finally, after hours of the Sam and the others singing to her and talking to her, keeping her grounded as she was shocked and restrained. They had taken Clint’s hearing aids. Scott was holding up the best of them honestly, having some experience with this kind of containment.

Sam wasn’t handling it well. He had been built for the sky. As a child he had dreamed of being a bird. As a teenager he had obsessed over planes and space ships. His life had been in the sky and on the ground, not under the sea.

He is the only one awake, so he is the first to see that something is clearly happening. The whole place vibrates as it rises from the ocean, the pressure changes and Sam feels his ears pop again. 

Clint wakes up suddenly in a pose like he is ready to fight with his bow, only there is nothing in his hands. Scott is the next person to wake up but he looks bored about it. He has told them that this is a much more boring prison than the last one he spent time in. They removed Wanda to a separate area earlier, after hours of zapping the girl. 

‘I am trapped inside a fairy hill’ Sam thinks. ‘Mortal men cannot enter here without leave of the fairy queen.’

Leave it to Steve Rogers to be that man.

-

**_“This is not the end of me, this is the beginning” –I Believe, Christina Perri_ **

Sam looked at the collection of idiotic white people he spent all of this time taking care of. Wanda at least had the good sense to look apologetic.

“If he dies of an anuerisym I get his shit.” Bucky Barnes throws out because that boy might have issues but his biggest issue is he is too much Steve Rogers’ best friend.

“No, I get his stuff. Grandma Wilson says I look like a young Robert Redford and I am her favorite.” Steve ‘The Original Shit Starter’ Rogers points out, completely unhelpfully. 

“I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” Sam began because he was honestly dealing with children.

“What is he saying?” Clint asked from the corner of the room. “His hands are in the way of his mouth.” Sam put his hands on the table and took turns looking at each member of the assembled team. 

“Who wants to explain how ya’ll destroyed an entire building in a very indestructible and high tech city?” Sam asks. Scott, honest to god raises his hand. No wonder T’Challa had claimed Kingly duties and bailed on this meeting.

-

**_“Aren’t fairy godmothers supposed to be nice and make you feel better about yourself? … No, you’re confusing fairy godmothers with sales clerks.” - Janette Rallison_ **

“Alright Barnes, this better be an actual emergency and not another bird related emergency, that shit aint funny.” Sam said walking into Bucky’s room. It still baffled Sam that Bucky kept separate rooms despite the fact that the super soldiers were Facebook official. Although Sam though it might have more to do with the sheer amount of clothes the man now owned. 

“What do you wear to something like this?” Bucky asked, turning around in the center of his room. The room looked like all the clothes had exploded with Barnes standing in the center of the detonation zone. 

Barnes was also stark fucking naked.

“Barnes.”

“Yeah?”

“We have discussed the need for at minimum undergarments when people other than Steve are present many times.” Sam states. Bucky Barnes, once the Winter Soldier, is a huge fan of going commando. He might be trying to start a nudist colony in Wakanda. They try not to force him into clothes, one because he reacts like a cat being given a bath, and two because he is allowed to make his own choices now. Apparently those choices revolve a lot around not wearing clothing. Sam doesn’t really understand why he needs a separate room for clothes when he regularly refuses to wear any. 

Barnes sighs like he is being asked to put down a video game and is actually ten years old and grabs a pair of boxers. 

“See, there. Now help me get dressed.” Barnes motions to the clothes bomb that is the room.

“Why not ask Steve?” Sam questions, he still starts digging around for that one blue jacket he knows Barnes owns.

“Steve wears khakis and think’s thats okay. He is not allowed near my clothes.” Barnes grimaces.

“Fair point.”

-

**_“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Are you over done yet?” -Charlotte Henley Babb_ **

Wanda was starting to realize that the people she now called family where completely insane and not to be trusted to accomplish anything normally. 

Two weeks ago she had left the house they were all staying in without saying anything to anyone about her quick run to the store. When she had returned Clint had been sitting in arm chair in the dark. He had turned on the lights when she came home and proceeded to give her a speech that sounded like it was from a sit com. He kept referring to Steve has her mother. 

Now that none of them had the world to save and bad guys to punch, what with them all being internationally wanted fugitives hiding out in Wakanda, the edges of sanity were starting to fray.

Today’s particular brand of insanity was turning out to be a power point presentation by one Sam Wilson.

“I want to thank all of you for coming and for none of you throwing knives at me so far.” The second half of this comment was directed at Bucky Barnes who shrugged like he couldn’t be bothered to be needlessly violent today. “Today we will be learning about the spectrum that is sexuality.”

Clint groaned and removed his hearing aids. Scott clapped. Steve turned the color of a tomato. Barnes sat forward in his seat, he liked new information. 

At least Wanda finally had a name for what she was, asexual. 

Downside, Steve was now making terrible jokes that contained the word Bi. 

-

**_“I believe that our lives, just like fairy tales- the stories that have been written by us humans, through our own experiences of living- will always have a hero and heroine, a fairy god mother and a wicked witch.”- Lucinda Riley_ **

It took a monster from outer space to get them all together again. Steve seemed to have forgive Tony from the very beginning but the others took longer. The Scott guy kept talking about Pym and how Starks were not to be trusted but Tony honestly wasn’t sure who this guy was. 

They still fought together, still saved the world. Barnes had even protected Tony’s flank at one point. Most of them still seemed reluctant to speak to him. Wanda had looked him the eyes once. It had been a long moment where Tony was sure she was going to touch his mind. 

“You are not forgiven.” She said with a voice like ice. 

Tony wander off by himself. Saving the world again wasn’t enough, was it?

Sam Wilson appeared next to him and handed Tony a bottle of water.

“You here to read me the riot act and tell me what an asshole I am?” Tony asked. “Because honestly I think a line is forming.”

“Nah, nothing I say can hurt you as much as you hurt yourself man.” Sam shrugged. Tony felt the gasp in his lungs. “You gotta figure out how to trust before you can be trusted.”

Years later Tony would think back to that moment as a turning point in his life. As the moment when he realized he had some shit to work through that no suit of armor or adopting a super powered teen was going to fix. 

-

The first time Sam Wilson met Claire Temple they had both been way too busy trying to save three different super powered idiots to do more than pass each other medical supplies and smack whoever tried to get up off the hospital beds.

The second time Sam Wilson met Claire Temple he had the breathing room to be charming. She didn’t react at all. Nothing about her face even changed a little. Not even an micro expression. 

“Cap, I found the woman I am going to marry.” Sam tells Steve over the phone thirty minutes later. 

“That’s really great Sam.” Steve sounded like he didn’t really care. “I’m happy for you but you gotta get back here with the flowers pal. I don’t personally care if my wedding has flowers but Nat is insisting. Bucky’s about three minutes from going out into the field and just bringing back Dandlions for center pieces if she doesn’t stop. They have dropped English entirely. It’s been nothing but Russian for the last ten minutes.” 

Sam gets the flowers back to the Rogers-Barnes wedding before the Russian duo some how figure out how to bring down the entire building. 

Claire also texts him back later that night. So win. 

**_“Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams.” -Douglas William Jerrold_ **

-

“I regret everything.” Sam admitted, sitting there at his own wedding as the Avengers now all formed a queue to give toasts. 

“Most of you don’t know this, but Sam is obsessed with fairy tales.” Steve begins. Claire looks like she is having an amazing time. They had honestly not been sure who’s group of super idiots were going to make more of a scene today. It shouldn’t have been a bet. Claire’s bunch might all have problems but their problems were localized to drinking and acid based super powers. Sam’s group could give psychology graduate students material for PhD papers for the rest of human history. “In fact Sam loves fairy tales so much, he sang the entire ballad of Tam Lin at MY wedding as his best man speech.”

In his defense Thor had brought that mead. 

“Sam helped each of us honestly.” Steve looks honest. That’s not a good sign. Steve only looks completely honest when he is getting ready to do something terrible. “Sam Wilson helped every member of this team by finding the fairy tale that best help us not only understand out lives but also heal.”

There was a scatter of laughter from the wedding guests. Sam could see his Ma and grandma giving Steve very calculating looks.

“I happen to be Snow White.” Steve continued. That got a real laugh. “The thing is, we realized that Sam didn’t have a story.” Oh no. 

Barnes had reappeared from somewhere holding a very large package. This was not good. Tony looked happy. Nothing good came from those three working together. They got along too well these days. Therapy had been involved but now the three of them could single handedly make the entire UN Security Council quit in just three hours. Sam wasn’t joking. They had actually done that. Barnes hadn’t even pulled out any knives. 

“We actually spent a lot of time thinking about this.” Steve turned to Sam now because he was a trained chorus girl and knew how to hit his mark. “None of the fairy tales fit you. And that got me thinking. Well all of us thinking. You helped us all. You have been the one to give each of us the tool we needed to get our happily ever after. There’s only one person who fits you.”

Barnes put down the thing he had been carrying. It expanded. It looked like Sam’s wings. Only instead of wings that looked a bird these wings looked like butterflies. 

“Thanks for being out fairy god mother.” Steve looked somewhere between utter laughter and tears. Sam felt about the same way. If Sam sniffed a little when Steve hugged him no one needed to know about it. 

-

“Groom, tell your grandmother to keep her hand’s off my husband.” Barnes told Sam later in the reception. 

The toasts had gone on for a long while. Nat had completely lost english and recited an entire piece of Russian poetry. Everyone had cried. Scott had actually told the story he had been sworn never to tell. In contrast Claire’s gang had just told her how happy they were for her. And then Frank had called her ‘good people’ and Claire had cried. 

The dancing was now in full swing. In truth Sam was a bit concerned about the way his grandmother had her hands on Steve Rogers.

“Why don’t you do it?” 

“I might be brain damaged but I am not crazy. I ain’t telling her to do anything without blood as back up.” Barnes gave Sam a flat stare. Well at least the man had a point. 

-

“I was thinking you could be godmother.” Wanda offered softly.

Sam was touched. Good and truly touched. Wanda wanted him to be godmother to her children. Her two boys who she had conceived using magic. Miracle babies of some kind. Wanda insisted that Vision was the father. 

“Steve and Bucky already called God fathers.” Wanda smiled weakly. 

“I never should have shown them that movie.” 

“They would have seen it eventually.” Wanda turned back to the babies in her arms. “What do you say? Ready to play fairy god mother to the next generation?” 

“I am.” 

**_-_ **

**_“We may say that the characters in fairy tales are ‘good to think with’… and that the job of the faiy tale is to that Why? Questions cannot be answered except in one way: by telling the stories. The story does not contain the answer, it is the answer.” –Brian Wicker_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Thanks for reading to the end!](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Fairy Tales started as oral traditions. Most sources say that they were almost exclusively told by women for women. They were our first lessons and our way to gauge the world when we didn’t have the written word. I will legit fight someone over fairy tales.
> 
> I will also fight anyone that thinks I miss labeled one of the Avengers here. I will actually come to your house and show you how wrong you are. 
> 
> To see more of my work look under my old Pseudo= Esyla


End file.
